Harbin Red Sausage

Harbin red sausage is a Russian-style sausage made chiefly of pork and beef, cured, ground, filled into casings and smoked over hardwood, with a glossy date-red skin, fine meat and a deep aroma of smoke and garlic.

Its craft began in the sausage workshop the Russian merchant Churin opened in Harbin in 1900, inheriting a Lithuanian style; the more than two hundred thousand Russian émigrés who gathered around the Chinese Eastern Railway brought Russian food with them, and red sausage grew from a foreign speciality into a native symbol of Harbin.

Red sausage can be eaten as is, or sliced to accompany a meal, sandwiched into lieba bread or served with drinks; for Harbiners a length of red sausage with a loaf of lieba is the everyday way, and queues often form before the Qiulin Lidaosi shops.

The date-red smoked skin, the strong garlic aroma and the lightly springy meat are what set Harbin red sausage apart from sausages elsewhere.